Shaheen Afridi brutally trolled Babar Azam

Did Shaheen Afridi mock Babar Azam?

After the Super 8 match between the Pakistan national cricket team and the England cricket team in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, the real discussion has been more about Babar Azam’s strike rate than the match itself.

Batting first, Pakistan posted 164/9, in which Babar Azam scored just 25 runs off 24 balls, with a strike rate of 104.17 — which is considered quite slow by T20 standards. This meant Babar was unable to increase the run rate during the middle overs. England’s spin attack tightened its grip on the game.

After the match, Shaheen Afridi’s statement in the press conference quickly went viral. He was asked that Farhan and Babar were building a good partnership, but things changed after Babar got out. Shaheen could have simply agreed with the reporter, but instead, without taking any names, he said that in T20 cricket, a partnership means having players at the crease who keep rotating the strike with singles and doubles and score 8–9 runs per over.

Now people are saying that Shaheen indirectly taunted Babar. And perhaps such claims make sense, because on a big platform like the T20 World Cup, the kind of acceleration required in the middle order has not been visible in Babar’s batting.